CHAPTER XXV. 
SPECIALTIES. 
T is well to grow a variety of crops for your 
own experience and your own table. But 
for profit, it is best to specialize, because 
if you read up all you should know about several 
crops, you will have no time to raise them. 
Specialization is the rule now in all lines of 
business, and as the farmer gets to be more and 
more a business man, he will adopt business 
methods, and push ahead. The big farm, 
partially cultivated, and covered with a great 
variety of crops which require as many varieties 
of cultivation to give good results, is a thing of 
the past, except where some individual farmer 
is too stupid to read the handwriting on the 
wall. It never paid as it ought, and it entailed 
tremendous labor. Now big areas are only 
cultivated where lots of help is employed, and 
diversity of crops can only be successfully 
practiced under the same conditions. 
Today the custom of cultivating small areas 
is increasing, and where it is done for profit, 
the grower more and more tends to specialize. 
Secretary Critchfield, of the Pennsylvania State 
Department of Agriculture, said some years 
ago that “the greatest amount of money in 
216 
